The first week in community is already over! Staff have settled in and our participants are all having a great time in their communities.

It has been a month since staff arrived. We had the chance to visit all the amazing communities where we are working now, and meet community members, coordinators, and host families. It is wonderful to see that all our preparation is paying off. Participants are interacting with community members, spending time with their host families, working on community-based initiatives alongside youth from Pérez Zeledón, leading extracurricular activities both for children and teenagers, and last but not least, making this experience an opportunity to grow as leaders and as people.

I want to share an experience I had this week.

I was a Project Supervisor in this project in 2014. I was the supervisor of four communities that this year are also working with AMIGOS: San Ramón Sur, San Ramón Norte, Berlín, and San Cayetano.

Last week, something really nice happened to me. I got to visit these communities again! For me, it was like I was traveling back to 2014, remembering the old times. I saw myself bringing a huge backpack full of books, clothes that maybe were not completely necessary, but most important, a lot of energy to get to know the community and support the participants there.

I visited Ehlen and Patrick in San José de Rivas. This is a small community located in the district of Rivas, Pérez Zeledón. They live with Mariana, Richard, and their family. They have a lot of experience being a host family, but this is the first time they have two “sons” with them. It was very nice to see Ehlen and Patrick working in the field, interacting with their host family, showing me around their community with a lot of excitement, and sharing with me the new words and expressions they have been learning from their host siblings (for instance, “a cachete”, which means “all good”).

I felt personally really glad to have the chance to share this visit with them and get to know more of the community. I was very glad to see them in the field and it made me think about many other participants that are having a great experience here in Costa Rica. It also made me think about AMIGOS, my experience working in Costa Rica, and all these strong relationships we all create, looking for more opportunities to get to know each other, appreciating one another in our differences, and building a life-long experience of growth.

 

I hope we can all keep enjoying this experience together!

 

 

Saludos,

Felipe De los Santos Moreira
Associate Project Director
Pérez Zeledón, Costa Rica